MEMPHIS – As perplexing as the Grizzlies were on both ends of the court in their season-opening loss to the Pacers, at least one of the quick fixes doesn’t seem very complicated.
Marc Gasol needs to be much better.
And Mike Conley must be far more aggressive.
“I’ve got to be better to help the team, set the tone for them and give them that house light that we need,” Gasol said. “Keep being confident about the work you put in. I do a lot of visualizing with how I prepare for games, trying to see how our plays are going to work and how (defenders) will prepare to play me. You just continue to work. It’s as simple as that. You work and trust until you break through it.”
Corrections and adjustments begin at the top of the roster. Gasol and Conley remain the clear catalysts of a team that revealed plenty of holes defensively and structual cracks in the offense. The Grizzlies returned to practice Thursday to pick up the pieces from Wednesday’s 111-83 setback in Indiana. They need a far better showing in Friday’s home opener against the Hawks, who surrendered 49 points in the second quarter of a blowout loss to the Knicks.
Gasol and Conley must regroup from a night when they combined to miss 17 of 22 shots from the field against the Pacers, who held the Grizzlies to just 29.8 percent overall from the field in Indiana’s most lopsided season-opening win in franchise history.
Particularly stuck in the mud on offense was Gasol, who went scoreless on four shot attempts in the first half and struggled with when and how to be effective within the Grizzlies’ revamped scheme. Like Gasol, Conley only attempted 11 shots, which were only three more than backup point guard Shelvin Mack and two fewer than the team-high 13 attempts Garrett Temple got in the game.
Conley said the Grizzlies are still in the initial learning process, and that developing chemistry on offense will take time. He mentioned how players spent time on the return flight from Indiana looking at film, and also attributed the woes on offense to an inability to get stops and rebounds on defense.
You just continue to work. It’s as simple as that. You work and trust until you break through it.
Marc Gasol
“You can’t win against anybody, especially a good team, if you don’t finish off possessions and get the ball going the other way,” Conley said in reference to the Grizzlies being out-rebounded 57-28 and outscored 60-16 in the paint. “We were having to exert too much energy have to reset clocks, and that takes away from our offense. We can’t throw these games out of the window and act like they didn’t happen. We have to continue to get better.”
Under coach J.B. Bickerstaff and new lead assistant Chad Forcier, the Grizzlies have tweaked their offense to a system designed to generate more passing, body movement and floor spacing. Ultimately, it’s supposed to create an egalitarian system where multiple players are scoring threats. Both Conley and Gasol have acknowledged they are running fewer traditional pick-and-roll sets that allowed their two-man game to dictate the attack in recent years.
While Conley shot an impressive 54.5 percent from the field and averaged nearly 17 points a game on a reduced preseason workload, Gasol was never able to find a rhythm entering the opener. In his four preseason games, Gasol shot 9-of-34 overall from the field and missed 11 of 12 attempts from three-point range.
Gasol is confident the offense will get going once the team works through some initial growing pains.
“We’re still trying to figure out a lot with where our spots are and our times to be aggressive,” Gasol said of playing alongside newcomers to the rotation. “It takes a little time. We have a lot of new faces and we are unselfish by nature, so we try to execute our offense. Once the ball moves away from us, that’s kind of what the other teams want. But we’ve got to do a better job of getting it back and making something happen, either for ourselves or somebody else. We’ve got to be triggers for this team and shoot better. And hopefully, it will open up things for our other teammates.”
Bickerstaff’s Revolving Rotation
If the Grizzlies’ opening-night rotation revealed anything, it’s that Bickerstaff’s search for effective combinations remains an ongoing process.
Memphis opened with Conley, Temple, Gasol, Chandler Parsons and JaMychal Green as starters. Mack, Jaren Jackson Jr., Kyle Anderson and Dillon Brooks were the first four off the bench. And by the end of Wednesday’s game, Bickerstaff had played a total of 11 players. How deep Bickerstaff went with his rotation wasn’t as surprising as the distribution of playing time among top reserves.
We can’t throw these games out of the window and act like they didn’t happen. We have to continue to get better.
Mike Conley
Mack’s 30 minutes were second-most on the team behind only Gasol, and MarShon was the Brooks of choice ahead of Dillon, who saw only six minutes against the Pacers. Bickerstaff said minor injuries that limited Anderson, Temple and Green in the preseason delayed some of the progress in settling on a set rotation. But Bickerstaff also said the combinations he uses off the bench will be fluid.
“Once we get to spots nine, 10, 11 and maybe even 12 on some nights, it will depend on what we need at a given time, who’s giving us what on a given night,” Bickerstaff said. “The good thing is we have a lot of guys we can play who might not play some nights, but we’ll need them to be ready other nights.”
Lottery Matchup Looming
Friday’s game will feature a matchup of two rookies taken in the top five of the lottery when Jackson’s Grizzlies face Trae Young’s Hawks at FedExForum.
It will actually be the third time the two have met since entering the league, including once in summer league and again two weeks ago in the preseason. The Grizzlies won both of those matchups, but this is the first one that really counts.
Jackson, the fourth overall pick, is coming off a season debut in which he finished with 10 points, five rebounds, three steals and a block in 25 minutes against the Pacers. Young, the fifth pick, had 14 points, six rebounds and five assists in a 126-107 loss to the Knicks on Wednesday.
“You have to keep a level head,” Jackson said of approaching opening week of his rookie season. “You have to balance everything. But it’s not as hard as you think, because we’ve already had the preseason and summer league games and a lot of practices leading up to this. So you just have to take what you’ve learned in practice into the games.”
The contents of this page have not been reviewed or endorsed by the Memphis Grizzlies. All opinions expressed by Michael Wallace are solely his own and do not reflect the opinions of the Memphis Grizzlies or its Basketball Operations staff, owners, parent companies, partners or sponsors. His sources are not known to the Memphis Grizzlies and he has no special access to information beyond the access and privileges that go along with being an NBA accredited member of the media.